The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks Than Others Do in 12 Months

Most organizations and individuals work in the context of annual goals and plans; a 12-month execution cycle. Instead, The 12 Week Year avoids the pitfalls and low productivity of annualized thinking. This book redefines your "year" to be 12 weeks long. In 12 weeks, there just isn't enough time to get complacent, and urgency increases and intensifies. The 12 Week Year creates focus and clarity on what matters most and a sense of urgency to do it now.

Will It Fly? How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don't Waste Your Time and Money

Stop rushing into businesses born from half-baked ideas, misguided theories, and other forms of self-delusion. A lack of proper validation kills more businesses than anything else. As Joel Barker says, "Speed is only useful if you're running in the right direction." Will It Fly? will help you make sure you are clear for takeoff.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.

Procrastinate on Purpose: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time

New York Times best-selling author and sales-performance trainer Rory Vaden brings his high-energy approach and can-do spirit to the most nagging problem in our professional lives: stalled productivity. Millions are overworked, organizationally challenged, or have a motivation issue that's holding them back. Vaden presents a simple yet powerful paradigm that will set listeners free to do their best work - on time and without stress and anxiety.

Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations

Every day we work hard to motivate ourselves, the people we live with, the people who work for and do business with us. In this way much of what we do can be defined as being motivators. From the boardroom to the living room, our role as motivators is complex, and the more we try to motivate partners and children, friends and coworkers, the clearer it becomes that the story of motivation is far more intricate and fascinating than we've assumed.

Idrees Haddad says:"Great insights into what motivates and demotivates"

Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Formula to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy...Create a Mass of Raving Fans...and Take Any Business to the Next Level

The "mind-reading" system that is revolutionizing online business. Do you know how to find out what people really want to buy? (Not what you think they want, not what they say they want, but what they really want?) The secret is asking the right questions - and the right questions are not what you might expect. Ask is based on the compelling premise that you should never have to guess what your prospects and customers are thinking.

Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur

When anyone can start a business (when everyone is running their career like a business), it begs a question. This is your one chance at life, you can have anything you want, what is worth doing? Most people don't know why they're doing what they're doing. They imitate others, go with the flow, and follow paths without making their own. They spend decades in pursuit of something that someone convinced them they should want, without realizing that it won't make them happy. Anything You Want is a manifesto about living life, appreciating enough, and doing what matters.

Pre-Suasion: Channeling Attention for Change

The author of the legendary best seller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini, shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn't lie in the message itself but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive 21st-century economy.

Steal the Show: From Speeches to Job Interviews to Deal-Closing Pitches, How to Guarantee a Standing Ovation for All the Performances in Your Life

Every day there are moments when you must persuade, inform, and motivate others effectively. Each of those moments requires you, in some way, to play a role, to heighten the impact of your words, and to manage your emotions and nerves. Every interaction is a performance, whether you're speaking up in a meeting, pitching a client, or walking into a job interview.

Take the Stairs: 7 Steps to Achieving True Success

Do you ride the escalator or do you take the stairs? No matter how you define success, it always requires one thing: self-discipline. But as popular speaker and strategist Rory Vaden explains, we live in an "escalator world", one that's filled with shortcuts, quick fixes, and distractions that make it all too easy to slide into procrastination, compromise, and mediocrity. What seems like an easier path is really much harder in the end - and, most important, it won't take you where you want to go.

The Millionaire Messenger: Make a Difference and a Fortune Sharing Your Advice

In The Millionaire Messenger, Brendon Burchard pulls back the curtains on the once-secretive "expert industry" and shows how to become an influential and highly paid advice expert through websites, books, speeches, seminars, coaching, consulting, and online programs. Blessed to receive life's golden ticket - a second chance - after surviving a dramatic car accident, Burchard has dedicated his life to helping others find their voice, live more fully, and follow their dreams. By following his 10-step program, average, ordinary people can learn to become experts in anything they choose.

Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is About Help Not Hype

Jay Baer's Youtility offers a new approach that cuts through the clutter: marketing that is truly, inherently useful. If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life. Drawing from real examples of companies who are practicing Youtility as well as his experience helping more than 700 brands improve their marketing strategy, Baer provides a groundbreaking plan for using information and helpfulness to transform the relationship between companies and customers.

#AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur's Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness

Gary Vaynerchuk—the inspiring and unconventional entrepreneur who introduced us to the concept of crush it—knows how to get things done, have fun, and be massively successful. A marketing and business genius, Gary had the foresight to go beyond traditional methods and use social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to reach an untapped audience that continues to grow.

Trust Agents Revised and Updated: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

Trust Agents has been widely acclaimed for its new approach to online marketing. Now, in this revised and updated edition, social media veterans Chris Brogan and Julien Smith show you how to tap into the power of social networks to build your brand's influence, reputation, and profits. Combining high-level theory and practical advice, they deliver actionable strategies and real case studies that show how social media can positively impact your business.

Silent Sales Machine 9.0

In this book, multiple online business strategies are documented as the author advises everyone from newbies to seasoned professionals on what does and doesn't work in the world of online business and Internet marketing. The listener will learn to establish multiple automated income streams using proven, creative concepts, with numerous real-world examples given.

Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters

Drawing on her 30 years' experience practicing pediatric and adolescent medicine, teen health expert Dr. Meg Meeker explains why an active father figure is maybe the single most important factor in a young woman's development. In this invaluable guide, Meeker shows how a father can be both counsel and protector for his daughter as she grows into a spiritually and mentally strong young woman.

The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry

The lifeblood of your business is repeat customers. But customers can be fickle, markets shift, and competitors are ruthless. So how do you ensure a steady flow of repeat business? The secret--no matter what industry you're in--is finding and keeping automatic customers. These days virtually anything you need can be purchased through a subscription, with more convenience than ever before.

Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising

Best-selling author Ryan Holiday, the acclaimed marketing guru for American Apparel and many bestselling authors and multiplatinum musicians, explains the new rules and provides valuable examples and case studies for aspiring growth hackers. Whether you work for a tiny start-up or a Fortune 500 giant, if you're responsible for building awareness and buzz for a product or service, this is your road map.

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

There used to be two teams in every workplace: management and labor. Now there’s a third team, the linchpins. These people invent, lead (regardless of title), connect others, make things happen, and create order out of chaos. They figure out what to do when there’s no rule book. They delight and challenge their customers and peers. They love their work, pour their best selves into it, and turn each day into a kind of art.

Contagious: Why Things Catch On

Why do some products get more word of mouth than others? Why does some online content go viral? Word of mouth makes products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. It's more influential than advertising and far more effective. Can you create word of mouth for your product or idea? According to Berger, you can. Whether you operate a neighborhood restaurant, a corporation with hundreds of employees, or are running for a local office for the first time, the steps that can help your product or idea become viral are the same.

The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life - Before 8AM

What if you could miraculously wake up tomorrow and any - or every area of your life was transformed? What would be different? Would you be happier? Healthier? More successful? In better shape? Would you have more energy? Less Stress? More Money? Better relationships? Which of your problems would be solved? What if I told you that there is a "not-so-obvious" secret that is guaranteed to transform any - or literally every area of your life, faster than you ever thought possible?

Publisher's Summary

"Anyone can write a blog post, but not everyone can get it liked thirty-five thousand times, and not everyone can get seventy-five thousand subscribers. But the reason we've done these things isn’t because we're special. It's because we tried and failed, the same way you learn to ride a bike. We tried again and again, and now we have an idea how to get from point A to point B faster because of it."

Three short years ago, when Chris Brogan and Julien Smith wrote their best seller, Trust Agents, being interesting and human on the Web was enough to build a significant audience. But now, everybody has a platform. The problem is that most of them are just making noise. In The Impact Equation, Brogan and Smith show that to make people truly care about what you have to say - you need more than just a good idea, trust among your audience, or a certain number of fol­lowers. You need a potent mix of all of the above and more. Use the Impact Equation to figure out what you’re doing right and wrong. Apply it to a blog, a tweet, a video, or a mainstream-media advertising campaign. Use it to explain why a feature in a national newspaper that reaches millions might have less impact than a blog post that reaches a thousand passionate subscribers.

Consider the phenomenally successful British singer Adele. For most musicians, onstage banter basically consists of yelling “Hello, Cleveland!” But Adele connects with her audience, pausing between songs to discuss a falling-out with her friends, or the drama of a break up. Each of these moments comes off as if she were talking directly with you, and you can easily relate. Adele has Impact. As the traditional channels for marketing, selling, and influencing disappear and more people inter­act mainly online, the very nature of attention is changing. The Impact Equation will give you the tools and metrics that guarantee your message will be heard.

I liked that this book was read by the authors and it was very conversational. They aren't the greatest narrators, but they certainly weren't bad. It's very focused on what to pay attention to when you create content. Content for what? Any content. Listen to Contagious first, then this one.

What made the experience of listening to The Impact Equation the most enjoyable?

The book was about the theory of publishing; print, podcast, video, twitter, facebook, reddit, and everything related to those things -- how modern ideas are changing, and how to shape them for yourself (and for others). I got a lot out of how to frame them for a modern audience; the analogy to crafting ideas really struck home.

What other book might you compare The Impact Equation to and why?

Hard to say, this is it's own animal. It's not a "How to do business on the internet book." It's not a book on "The Art" of marketing. It IS a book about writing and producing great content, and how to create ideas with meaning; maybe a treatise on "The Way of Creating Content."

Which scene was your favorite?

Three things: the first was the analogy of SXSW to what the typical internet user goes through; second, the comparison of ideas to baseballs, meaning it's not necessary to change a very popular game to make an impact -- that you can craft originally within the context of accepted formulas; and thirdly, the note that the quality of information on the internet is actually going up due to the competition among ideas -- a hope for the future kind of thing.

Any additional comments?

This book goes way beyond Trust Agents (the authors' last book) and even though I mentioned that it is *more* theoretical it has proven itself already to also be more actionable. It is broken down into detail where important, but never bogs down -- a very enjoyable listen!

If you want to learn how to grow a community, this is the book to get. At its core, it's not about social media - it's about communicating. Social media makes communicating easier technically, but it's easy to be on social media all day long and never communicate anything of value to the people who want to hear it. Chris and Julien show how to build a community of people who embrace your message.

I'm going to listen to it again now so I can get some action items for myself, and to really absorb the ideas in this book. Thanks guys - your book makes me happy.

This book is a must read for anyone looking to help others and make an impact in the world. The entire book resonated deeply with me and the practical tips and strategies are worth millions. Thanks for putting this in the world.

Would you try another book from Chris Brogan and Julien Smith and/or Chris Brogan and Julien Smith ?

Yes, probably.

What does Chris Brogan and Julien Smith bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

While both these men are smart and successful I find their books very hyped with a lot of filler and little actual tangible material that is that much different from any other type of book from the same category.